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[Reelya]

It's in the OP credits for the show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hsiclKnjk&t=60

[Neonivek]

Hey Cript, as a counterpoint to 'a bad ending doesn't invalidate a story,' I'd like to present Mass Effect 3 and the backlash that followed it. As a counter-counterpoint, I'd say Stephen King's a good one to throw out there, since his endings can be real stinkers to the rest of the book's build-up, but the novels are worth it for the experience leading to it.

Yeah. That's more or less exactly my point. I guess I could have worded the brief of my statement better with words like "always" or "necessarily". Would you actually recommend playing mass effect, despite the ending of the third game?

It helps that with notable exceptions fiction tends to couch things for the ending. At least series that are meant to have a definitive ending at least (Ones that don't and end, typically intentionally peter out or have a "The adventure continues" ending).

Writing a good satisfying ending is a art form seemingly entirely separate from writing a satisfying story.

>_< goodness is Satisfying Ending-Fu a rare skill. Don't get me wrong I've definitely seen satisfying endings in anime but I do honestly mean what I say when I say that writing an ending and writing a story are two different talents.

Not just anime that has this problem. (In fact it wasn't even what I was thinking of when I thought about the inability to write satisfying endings)

[Reelya]

Been checking out this season's shows, it's not looking too bad.

Shoukako no Altair is similar to Arslan Senki.

Isekai Shokudou is a slice of life show about a restaurant / cooking, but it's like Gate as well. The restaurant is on a dimensional faultline.

Made in Abyss - kid friendly (no fanservice) adventure show with an interesting premise.

Princess Principal - what t.f. is this? It's a steampunk alt-history spy thriller, but with girls. Although it's got a subdued color palette, and gritty elements to it. It's a weird mix.

Vatican Kiseki Chousakan - a show about catholic priests who investigate murders and "miracles".

Ballroom e Youkoso - aimless kid takes up ballroom dancing.

Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun - sports comedy about a soccer player with OCD / germophobia.

18if - weird show about people trapped in dreams. Episodes vary from cute to gory as fuck.

Centaur no Nayami - slice of life about a centaur girl at school.

Knight's & Magic - magic-powered "gundams" in a fantasy setting. It's been pretty fun so far.

Nana Maru San Batsu - anime about going in tv-show style quizzes.

Dive!! - for people who liked Free! now there's Dive!! with two exclamation points. It sounds like they're cashing in, except the light novel of Dive!! ran from 2000 - 2002.

Saiyuki Reload Blast - it's sort of like monkey / journey to the west, but with chainsmoking gunslingers instead of priests.

There are a couple of decent romcom ones too,

Koi to Uso is about a future Japan where the government mandates who you have to marry to boost the population growth, which ... isn't really all that far-fetched to imagine, given Japanese culture. first episode was pretty good, second one was so-so. Might become more haremy or fanservicy.

Konbini Kareshi - shoujo romcom one, but there are at least two potential couples here, might be one that shifts the focus around rather than on a single couple.

Sure, not all of those shows are great, but ... there's definitely tons of variety this season. I still have a few more I have'nt checked out too.

[Neonivek]

Vatican Kiseki Chousakan - a show about catholic priests who investigate murders and "miracles".

Ballroom e Youkoso - aimless kid takes up ballroom dancing.

Now THESE spark my interest!

Mind you the first probably shouldn't given that a Catholic Priest TYPICALLY means Laser Pugilist... But I haven't seen it, for all I know it actually is that.

The second I also probably shouldn't because I already watched ONE show about "Aimless person tries to become popstar... WOW being a popstar is amazing!"... But hey maybe they will do something about it.

[IronyOwl]

Princess Principal - what t.f. is this? It's a steampunk alt-history spy thriller, but with girls. Although it's got a subdued color palette, and gritty elements to it. It's a weird mix.

Cute Girls Doing Noir Things sounds like it might be something I'm interested in, so I gave this a shot. Based on the first episode, the weirdness seems to come from just slotting the aforementioned steampunk alt-history spy thriller around an overpowered waifu battle cluster, with no actual effort made to mix the two. The result is that it's up to the supporting cast to try to sell the premise and setting, because the main girls are busy pwning incompetent noobs, lounging about as though nothing was wrong/odd, and occasionally verbally affirming that things are totally spy-like.

Other weird thing: The start of the episode was a lot more interesting and imaginative than the end. I think they thought they were pulling a gritty twist at some point, but it's not really gritty if it doesn't apply to the main characters. "The detective's partner turns on him and shoots him in an alley, then he curses his partner for being a snake and himself for being a fool" is a gritty twist. "The detective's partner turns on him and is shot in an alley because the detective knew it all along and so took the bullets out of his gun, then he gets Chinese food to congratulate himself on a job well done" is not a gritty twist, it's reaffirming that the hero plays by different rules than you're insisting the world operates on.

In short, as near as I can tell it's generic and flat as hell inside an unusual vanity wrapper. They had a neat steampunk gravity ball that required being stuffed in a refrigeration (read: water-filled) cylinder between uses, but that's about it and even that only showed up at the very beginning of the episode. Alongside a ninja loli charge-slicing a car into the air, naturally.

[Zangi]

Saiyuki Reload Blast - it's sort of like monkey / journey to the west, but with chainsmoking gunslingers instead of priests.

There are like 3-4 other seasons of this chainsmoking gunslinger journey to the west show.  Just for reference. 
Havn't watched this latest one yet, but there was some continuity between some of them.  One of em might have been a reset/redo though, so probably on the Reload timeline.

Also, holy *insert object here*, this Saiyuki stuff is probably at least a decade old.

[JoshuaFH]

I've restarted Shokugeki No Souma, aka Food Wars, this time with the manga. I like how the adaptation from manga to anime is almost 1-to-1. Continuing past where the anime leaves off... well, I don't want to spoil anything, and I'm not fully up-to-date with the manga yet, but it eerily reminds me of the start of the Hueco Mundo arc in Bleach, which fills me with both hype and dread. Hype because, when I first originally watched that in Bleach, I was PUMPED... but then the arc fell flat on it's face. The big bad of Food Wars is even EERILY SIMILAR to Aizen in appearance and mentality.

That being said, I think the show is degenerating into a thinly veiled political tract espousing the merits of the 'goodness' of unrestricted capitalism versus the 'evils' of supervised government monopolies, you know, socialism and the like.

I strongly look forward to more of the manga getting adapted to anime.

[Karnewarrior]

Princess Principal - what t.f. is this? It's a steampunk alt-history spy thriller, but with girls. Although it's got a subdued color palette, and gritty elements to it. It's a weird mix.

Other weird thing: The start of the episode was a lot more interesting and imaginative than the end. I think they thought they were pulling a gritty twist at some point, but it's not really gritty if it doesn't apply to the main characters. "The detective's partner turns on him and shoots him in an alley, then he curses his partner for being a snake and himself for being a fool" is a gritty twist. "The detective's partner turns on him and is shot in an alley because the detective knew it all along and so took the bullets out of his gun, then he gets Chinese food to congratulate himself on a job well done" is not a gritty twist, it's reaffirming that the hero plays by different rules than you're insisting the world operates on.

It may not be a gritty twist, but it could be a good one. Especially if you got someone who's really good at foreshadowing doing it, so you can watch the series a second time with a buddy and giggle when he wonders why the Detective is taking the Partner's bullets since you know he actually put together where "Prague" was meant to be in that note he found on Don Mozzarella's countertop after the clue he got from Mo R. Pussi and her band of travelling whores.

Actually a lot of poor twists could be done well with the right foreshadowing. The failures usually come from being too obvious or out of left field.

[IronyOwl]

Actually a lot of poor twists could be done well with the right foreshadowing. The failures usually come from being too obvious or out of left field.

I think the ideal twist is one you don't see coming at all at the time, but is hilariously obvious in hindsight. For obvious reasons, this is incredibly hard to pull off and completely subjective to each person.

The other obvious target would be a creeping suspicion that's on or close to the mark, so you either think it might happen but aren't sure, or think something might happen and something similar does (or wildly different but because the other thing almost happened). Also incredibly difficult for mostly the same reasons.

[JoshuaFH]

Actually a lot of poor twists could be done well with the right foreshadowing. The failures usually come from being too obvious or out of left field.

I think the ideal twist is one you don't see coming at all at the time, but is hilariously obvious in hindsight. For obvious reasons, this is incredibly hard to pull off and completely subjective to each person.

I think the only way to do something like that with any sense of consistency is to deliberately place red herrings everywhere, and I mean everywhere, so even the savviest of watchers can't forecast what is going to happen if only for the overabundance of evidence that points in every conceivable way the story could possibly go.

[Karnewarrior]

Sprin has an uncanny knack for picking the right herring from a pile of red, blue, and orange herrings.

Even when the twist is that it's a fucking trout and not a herring at all.

So even then some people are just going to not have twists happen to them. Some people are gifted by Apollo.

[Cruxador]

Sprin has an uncanny knack for picking the right herring from a pile of red, blue, and orange herrings.

Even when the twist is that it's a fucking trout and not a herring at all.

So even then some people are just going to not have twists happen to them. Some people are gifted by Apollo.

I know this is a metaphor but how the hell would a trout get into a herring pile?

[Andres]

Is Sword Art Online good?

[JoshuaFH]

Is Sword Art Online good?

I've never watched it, but it gets bashed very frequently for being Light Novel-grade schlock. Other than that, I heard the first season was enough to hook people on it.

[Antioch]

Is Sword Art Online good?

No. First half of the first season is decent enough, after that it becomes utter trash.